Shoulda Known Better (Gwen Moritz Editor’s Note)

Other than a CBD ointment that a coworker offered me when my wrist was aching, I’ve never used marijuana. I don’t have a qualifying condition to use it medicinally in Arkansas, thank goodness, and I’m not even the slightest bit curious about using it recreationally, even in venues where it’s legal.

But I’m paid to be curious about business in Arkansas, and marijuana is one of the few growth industries we have right now. It’s the first truly new industry we’ve had in the state since natural gas fracking boomed in the Fayetteville Shale more than a decade ago, and I trust that it will last longer.

I’m referring here, of course, to the new industry of legal marijuana. Weed has been a profitable enterprise for the most risk-tolerant entrepreneurs for decades. A coworker recently complained that we still have people in prison for selling the same product that wealthy investors are now licensed to sell, but I don’t see the two as equivalent. Legal marijuana is regulated and taxed; moonshine is still illegal and can be dangerous. Much of the lung damage being attributed to vaping seems to be associated with black-market products, especially those containing THC, the high-inducing ingredient in cannabis.

The best thing about legalizing marijuana use, medicinally or otherwise, is the fact that it’s been used by so many people in so many places for so many years that the drawbacks are well understood. Better understood than the benefits, since there is still wide disagreement on how medicinal marijuana really is.

While marijuana can create dependency, it doesn’t kill people. In fact, if a Louisiana coroner is correct in his conclusion, a death earlier this year is the first in the U.S. ever attributed to an overdose of THC. And it was ingested by vaping, not smoking or edibles.

There is a fervent hope that medical marijuana can reduce dependence on and abuse of opioids, but the National Institutes of Health warn against irrational exuberance. After analyzing data from 1999-2017, “The investigators uncovered no evidence that either broader cannabis laws (those allowing recreational use) or more restrictive laws (those only permitting the use of marijuana with low tetrahydrocannabinol concentrations) were associated with changes in opioid overdose mortality rates.”

In this issue of Arkansas Business we have the story of yet another doctor accused of overprescribing opioids — an investigation that started with a death — and commentary from Bill Witty of Harrison, whose daughter died of a fentanyl overdose.

If only we had known as much about opioids when they were widely introduced in the 1990s as we know about marijuana. Instead, doctors trusted the pharmaceutical makers, who used legal settlements and sealed evidence to hide what they knew: Opioids didn’t work as well or as long as advertised except at higher doses that could create dependence in a matter of days.

More responsible prescribing is vital, as is punishment of pill mill operators and peddlers. But the addicts are not instantly cured when they can’t get prescriptions. I fear this epidemic will take many more years to work through, with many more families destroyed.

And how about that vaping craze? Even the products that don’t cause life-threatening lung damage are designed specifically to deliver an addictive contributor to heart disease. Someone needs to explain why, decades after we understood how addictive nicotine is, this new product was allowed on the market with bright candy colors and fruit flavors.

And please, don’t try to tell me that it was just supposed to be a safer alternative to cigarettes for adults who were already addicted. No one believes that.

Low-level marijuana offenders don’t need to be in prison — and I’m not persuaded that many actually are. The Washington Post, fact-checking a statement by former Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke, determined that, as of September 2016, almost half of all federal prisoners had been convicted of some kind of drug offense but perhaps 1% were there for mere possession of marijuana.

In 2017, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, only 92 people were sentenced to federal prison for marijuana possession, out of nearly 20,000 drug convictions that year.

Now, most prisoners are being held by states, not the federal government. And at the state level, decriminalization is becoming the norm — 26 states have either decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana or actively legalized recreational use.

My wrist did feel better after I rubbed that CBD ointment on it.

Email Gwen Moritz, editor of Arkansas Business, at GMoritz@ABPG.com and follow her on Twitter at @gwenmoritz.